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The Kennedys: President and accounted for

Americans take their dead presidents very seriously, particularly in terms of how they are portrayed on TV.

Living fictional presidents are fine: Martin Sheen on West Wing, Geena Davis in Commander in Chief, Dennis Haysbert and Cherry Jones on 24.

But the martyred John F. Kennedy, and before him, the dying Ronald Reagan — venture there at your peril.

In 2003, the CBS network was pressured into dropping their already shot and scheduled TV movie, The Reagans, by pre-emptively outraged historians, prominent conservatives and Reagan friends and family. It ended up airing, without further incident, on the cable channel Showtime.

History repeated itself when Discovery History (not related to our own History Television) decided to drop its own eight-hour miniseries, The Kennedys, sending its producers scrambling unsuccessfully from network to network, until they found it a new U.S. home on the obscure movie service ReelzChannel.

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The series will still air here, as promised, in two-hour chunks, four consecutive Sunday nights at 9 on History, starting April 10.

Down south, the controversy continues. There’s a reason, production costs and tax incentives aside, that both of these much-contested efforts came all the way up to Canada to shoot (The Kennedys here; The Reagans in Montreal).

Distancing themselves from agenda-based meddling turned out to be something of a two-edged sword for the producers. Deprived of any physical evidence to the contrary, much of the initial criticism of both presidential minis was made on the basis of early draft scripts containing scenes and statements never ultimately filmed.

Even then, when have we ever looked to dramatically recreated history for fact-based veracity? Real events are often enhanced; real-life characters simplified or composited; unseen conversations and motivations extrapolated.

The Kennedys saga in particular didn’t need much in the way of dramatic enhancement. Indeed, if it had never happened, and someone had presented the entire thing as fiction, I’m sure it would have been rejected by networks, audiences and critics as being too much to be believed.

American viewers had the chance to judge for themselves when the much-maligned mini debuted there last week. The curiosity factor alone gave ReelzChannel its biggest rating ever, in the vicinity of 2 million, which is not bad at all for a minor second-tier cable channel.

American reviews have been somewhat mixed, but generally, unexpectedly positive.

“It is not the imagined conversations or small historical distortions that make The Kennedys both unsettling to watch and addictive,” wrote the New York Times. “This is a portrait of the Kennedy White House that is recognizable and respectful, and also prurient, giving equal weight to historic turning points and personal weaknesses. It’s well made.”

The New York Post called it “without a doubt, one of the best, most riveting, historically accurate dramas about a time and place in American history that has ever been done for TV.”

“It’s thoughtful,” insisted GQ Magazine, “an interpretation, not a mugging. While the interpretation may not be one that Camelot flame-keepers cherish, that’s not the same thing as calumny.”

The Los Angeles Times singled out B.C.-born Barry Pepper as the standout among its predominantly Canadian cast, describing him thus: “The revelation of The Kennedys ... who delivers an Emmy-deserving performance, slowly building a Bobby who becomes the family’s, and the Kennedy administration’s, spine of steel, aware of the choices and sacrifices he is making and prepared to make them every time.”

Equally impressive is Brit import Tom Wilkinson as the stern, power-wielding Kennedy patriarch, Joe Sr., evoking actual empathy for this cold and complex man whose callous manipulations have long overshadowed his genuine love of and pride in his sons.

(That being said, the scene in which he tears a vicious verbal strip off incredulous wannabe climber Frank Sinatra may be the highlight of the entire eight hours.)

Holmes is absolutely dreadful here, somnambulating her way through the entire eight hours, except for the brief, even more annoyingly perky period that she is under the questionable medical care of Jack’s “Dr. Feelgood,” Max Jacobson.

(And therein lay my biggest Kennedys revelation — the exhausted, stressed-out, back-pain incapacitated president, who could only sit or stand for minutes at a time, was apparently, by his own count, being regularly injected with almost 20 different prescription drugs.)

Kinnear is merely adequate, though through very little fault of his own. Unlike Bobby and Joe, the actual man remains essentially an emotional cipher, even at the height of a personal or political crisis, quite maddeningly unreadable.

He is also, depending on the shot, distractingly small, not only in height — his 5’10” to the real president’s 6’1” — but also in terms of the famous J.F.K. charisma.

With these two sagging down the middle of the saga — buoyed briefly by Charlotte Sullivan’s amourous, unravelling Marilyn Monroe — the story only truly soars at the beginning and at the end, when Joe Sr. and Bobby, and later Diana Hardcastle’s steely Rose, get respective room to dominate.

The period’s unprecedented political, cultural and social upheaval pretty much speaks for itself — The Kennedys lives and times, as meticulously depicted here, are never anything less than fascinating.

“I hadn’t seen anything that had been done (before) ... it’s hard enough to watch him for me. But it was an incredible job as an actor to get to be able to portray him.

“There’s obviously a number of great books; I think Robert Dallek’s An Unfinished Life is the best, kind of quintessential book about the Kennedy family and his administration. Certainly there’s an extraordinary amount of footage ... there’s also a lot of recordings of him in the White House, and there’s quite a lot to do and see and at the end of the day that only helps so much, (but) you use what you can.”

Katie Holmes as Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis

“When this project came up, I was so excited, and I already admired her, but the more I just learned of her, my admiration grew and I feel so honoured to be playing her.

“I’m not so worried about matching exactly what she did, because we don’t really know, and a lot of this project is filling in the blanks. She had this sort of movie star quality, and ... and beyond. She, you know, is a woman who worked very, very hard and made it look very effortless, and ultimately she did it to not only help her husband, but to help our country, and she really understood the power of, you know, if he looked like a king and she looked like a queen, well then our country looked amazing and still that’s why we look back at this time period.”

Barry Pepper as Robert Kennedy:

“Playing biographical characters like this ... you know, it’s tremendously nerve wracking and the responsibility is massive. So I think it would be an absolute joy to hear from the Kennedy family, or to hear feedback if they actually do see the series, because I think that I possibly love R.F.K. as much as they do. I really didn’t anticipate that.”

“I came into this project as a Canadian ... I just knew the broad strokes of this aristocratic American family and R.F.K. and his legacy. It wasn’t until I became deeply immersed in the production that I grew to become very ferociously protective and admire him greatly, because he was so courageous to stand up during such a volatile time in American history knowing full well what would happen to him.

“He would have made an extraordinary president. He was a passionate advocate of peace, justice and freedom, not just for Americans, but for people all over the world ... I think that now more than ever, we need men like him.”

Jon Cassar, director:

“The funny part of it all, you know, the controversy that everyone thinks, the controversy that’s there ... is really not warranted to what the show is.

“Unfortunately, the way it played out, everyone put two and two together and thought that was really what it was about. When they see it, I think people will be very surprised. It’s a wonderful story about the Kennedys, and very sensitively done.

“The rest of the world doesn’t seem to have any trouble with it, and now that Americans are finally going to see it, hopefully that’s how they’ll feel too.”

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